The publisher of a weekly publication called TIDBiTS spoke out Friday against racist fliers she said were inserted in a stack of pilfered newspapers and distributed in a San Bernardino neighborhood on Valentine’s Day.
“TIDBiTS does not condone racism, bigotry of any kind. We are a family friendly, non-political publication,” said TIDBiTS publisher Kimberly Bailey in an email Friday. She is one of TIDBiTS’ more than 150 publishers nationwide and in Canada who circulates across the San Bernardino Mountains and in San Bernardino, Lucerne Valley, Highland and Mentone
Bailey said the newspaper can be found at gas stations and in motel lobbies, restaurants, and mini markets, but it is not delivered to residences. According to its website, TIDBiTS is “a non-controversial, weekly newspaper dedicated to publishing entertaining morsels for the mind, food for thought as it were: trivia, fun facts, amusing stories and oddities.”
“We don’t stuff it in your mailbox, and we don’t toss it in your driveway,” said Bailey, adding that her quote is actually a catch-phrase used by the publication.
On Wednesday, however, residents living in a San Bernardino neighborhood near the Arrowhead Country Club reported finding the newspaper delivered to their homes. Inserted in the paper was a black and white flier with an illustration of a blonde white woman and the words “LOVE YOUR RACE” printed in bold black letters above. At the bottom of the flier was the logo and website address for National Alliance, one of the largest and most notorious white supremacist organizations in the U.S.
National Alliance was founded in 1974 by the late William Luther Pierce, a former professor of physics at Oregon State University who also wrote, under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, the 1978 novel The Turner Diaries – a dystopian novel about a future society where the government has banned guns, forcing a group of highly skilled white subversives to go underground and plot to overthrow the government and start a race war.
Bailey said Valentine’s Day is the day National Alliance kicks off its Love Your Race campaign , citing a website by Kevin Alfred Strom, a white supremacist who in 2005 formed National Vanguard, an offshoot of National Alliance.
Police on Wednesday confiscated nearly 50 of the newspapers and fliers from homes on Parkside Drive and Broadmore Boulevard North. The newspapers were believed to have been taken from a rack at a Shell station at 40th Street and Waterman Avenue and delivered to the neighborhood after the fliers were inserted.
San Bernardino police Lt. Mike Madden said in a telephone interview Friday that the identity of the culprits was never ascertained, and there were no reports of the fliers being disseminated in other residential neighborhoods. He said the FBI and Justice Department were informed of what happened, but no crime was actually committed, and the case is essentially closed.
“People may infer it is racist. They may find it distasteful, but without some kind of threat or intimidation behind it, at this point, it’s not a crime,” Madden said, adding that the fliers boiled down to free speech protected by the First Amendment. “Certainly, there will be those who will imminently disagree, but it’s what our country was founded on.”
Bailey said other publications need to be aware of what happened and be on the lookout for potential repeat activity in the future.
“The concern we have is the damage to TIDBiTS in the mountain region up there,” said Kenneth Woodard, vice president and owner of Tidbits Media, Inc., based in Montgomery, Alabama. “It’s just unsettling, especially for Kimberly (Bailey) being the local publisher. We certainly don’t want to see any fallout from this.”
Madden said police have no reason to believe TIDBiTS had anything to do with what occurred.